The Wealthier a Country, the Less Important Religion, Except For The United States. Why? Asks the NY Times

I have read the explanations of why Americans are more religious than their prosperous counterparts, apparently contradicting the observation that religiosity declines in step with prosperity. Why are Americans relatively more religious in spite of enjoying unprecedented prosperity (at least until recent days)? The answers given in the link provided by Bob are many and varied as well as reasonable. Yet perhaps there are reasons not explored here, which prompts me to want to add my four cents worth. (Four in order to account for inflation.)

First I want to note that virtually all the explanations are mechanistic ('scientific') ones which cite historical and cultural facts as cause for a predisposition to religious belief and observance, perhaps just as misplaced DNA might predispose one to certain diseases. The respondents overlook an important stimulus for today's renewed religious expression in my view, and that is the wanton materialism which has followed (paradoxically, to be sure) on the heels of the counter-culture's righteous triumphs in the culture wars of the 1970's. I say 'paradoxical,' for what the culture warriors set free was not the prized 'individual,' but a voracious, mindless consumer.

It was an era which witnessed the 'Closing of the American Mind,' as Alan Bloom put it; one which did not produce an imaginative leap forward as promised, but instead a regression. Our own cultural revolution mirrored another such revolution in distant China, and, like a mirror, ours put things in reverse so that every egg-head was not put behind the plow, but every plowhand behind a desk. Our Red Guards were equally unforgiving. This crowd, which burned books while taking for granted the privileges of a higher education, failed to provide either schools or Little Red Books for those left behind. By failing to carry a great many Americans with them, our revolutionaries left a festering split in the American national psyche and a country divided ever since.

The rump -- left behind in the dust of Bob Dylan's tour bus; left to feel the sting of insults blowing in the wind – were the very working stiffs whose grit and down-home virtues Dylan (in slavish emulation of Woodie Guthrie) had once celebrated. Figure that one out. Yet it wouldn't be the first time the plain people were betrayed. And their reaction was to retreat once again into their certainties.

To the youthful sybarite intent on having fun, preferably at great expense, it is the religionist, fascinated with the 'occult,' who fails to get with it or get real. Yet, it is the perfect square he scorns who is smart enough to see that it is not the provocative behavior of the eternally young and beautiful that is 'shocking,' but rather the trashing of the fundamentally religious conception of the human person when moral responsibility is denied.

All religions embody the idea that human beings are moral agents, held to account by a 'higher' power, principle or creator. Beyond the Bill of Rights and all man-made law and regulation, there lie the INALIENABLE rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights belong to the authentic human being, not to the fashionable construct protected by law. The same creator or creative principle which confers these rights also charges the recipients with matching responsibilities which are moral. There are things which one should NOT do, for beyond the courts and the arbitrary judgments of dictators and kings, there lies another judge.

Surely custom, tradition and the moral code acquire their power from on high and not from blustering stuffed shirts or from a gang of dead white men given to sententious pronouncements, as our young revolutionaries and putative masters of the universe were wont to believe. It is certainly true that a priestly class will forever attempt to arrogate this power to itself or claim a readiness to intercede with the god on our behalf much as lobbyists are prepared to do (for a fee) when we have to deal with a resistance in the slow-working, looping bowels of an omniscient Government regulatory body. Where this higher power is hijacked and abused, as it often is by either priests in clerical vestments or priests in white lab coats, the answer surely is not to arrogate it to one's self and to lay claim to the authority to define the human being according to 'the situation,' or according to reflexive behaviors, or according to one's own estimation of one's 'human potential.'

We are told now that the human being is a Mr. Nice Guy, naturally peaceful and loving and, of course, automatically intelligent, sensitive and creative. It seems he is not given to violent or bad behavior except when first corrupted, traumatized or victimized by institutionalized prejudice, parents, psychos, the System, Big Money, the Corporations, a shadowy conspiracy which controls the levers and the gears, and so on. It seems we are good except when we are bad; and when we are bad, the fault lies elsewhere. The fault lies in the environment, and it is the Government's responsibility to advance the money or pass a law to correct the fault.

Mr. Nice Guy is today's preferred model for any number of reasons. On the one hand he is free to do as he likes, as his actions are not subject to any moral restraint (although they may be subject to nominal legal restraint.) He may be beholden to his banker and his boss, but certainly not to any god or bound to honor any religious conception of the good man. He need not behave well or honorably; he need only 'survive' while allowing others to do the same. On the other hand, Mr. Nice Guy is the perfect Stimulus/Response mechanism so beloved by scientists and salespeople. He is only a product of his environment and thus can be easily manipulated by manipulating his environment.

One is only free when one is free to choose the Good and reject the Bad; and free also to choose the Bad and reject the Good. If there were no Bad, we could not choose the Good or the Better. If we are eternally a New Age Mr. Nice Guy, then we are denied choice, for everything we do (provided we don't interfere with the strokes of other folks) is necessarily Good. How can you be a bad guy if you are automatically and forever a Mr. Nice Guy?

If we are moral agents, free to choose, there is always a Better; a Better for which we must sacrifice and strive if we are to prove ourselves truly free human beings. Thus religion is not the enemy of freedom, but its passionate upholder. The enemies of freedom are those who deny that human acts are moral choices and who conclude from their objective measurements that 'human behavior' (as they call it) is reducible to mindless and value-free stimulus-and-response or fairly described as an ego trip, paying visits to peak experiences and testing the limits of self-indulgence. Allowing the State, the media, or circumstances to determine one's identity, purposes and dreams is choosing to be a mechanism responsive to stimuli orchestrated by others. If one abdicates moral responsibility, then one is truly a slave of circumstance.

There is the notion that societies and markets are free when self-regulating or self-correcting; free when Government 'interference' is kept to a minimum. To reduce the size and influence of Government, libertarians and free marketeers advise 'starving the Beast' ( by inflicting a thousand tax cuts) and building a Maginot Line of statutory rights. The theory is that, if the larger system is self-regulating, then this permits the individual to go his capricious and self-interested way without let or hindrance. He is 'free' and his irresponsibility is legitimized.

This reasoning is wrong-headed however, for no individual is free unless he is also secure. Security cameras, identity checks, and spam filters; as well as liquidity crunches, bank failures, a dismembered industrial base, job losses, mountains of debt, foreclosures, a busted Social Security system, and a volatile stock market are all proofs, one way or another, of the fact that we are not secure in our 'free' society or in our 'free' markets. Our System is no guarantor of security and thus no guarantor of individual freedom.

The only sure guarantee of an individual's freedom is the assurance that he can trust his neighbor, his associates, his boss, his counter party in a financial exchange, his Government, and lastly the stranger. It was not the absence of a tin star in town which made a pistol, holster and gun belt a necessary fashion statement in the Wild West, but absence of trust. Even the present freeze in interbank lending is being blamed on lack of trust. Ultimately, freedom is guaranteed by trust and not by law and regulation. And need I say that the trustworthy neighbor, etc. is a moral agent; free and responsible; not free because he has no responsibilities beyond pursing self-interest.

So, we come back to the initial question: Why are Americans relatively more religious? Plausible reasons have already been enumerated on the website to which Bob points us. I would add yet another reason. I conclude that we are more religious because a great many of us have been forced, by a frontal attack on a cherished religious insight, to come out of the woodwork, to fight our corner, and to define again the nature of freedom as religion has always defined it. Only moral agents are free. Mr. Nice Guys are not.